Five Unbeatable Ideas to Stop Restaurant Customer Churn

4 Min Read
10.27.2017 By Galina Grigoreva

There have already been many debates in the restaurant industry on how to make sales. But a less talked about, yet still very important (arguably even more important) topic is how to make sure that your guests remain your guests.

Your customer churn rate, also known as attrition rate, has a direct impact on the ability to grow your business. Building solid relationships with your clients and increasing their satisfaction can help. But what, as a restaurant owner, can you really do to fight off customer churn?

Let’s look at these five tactics to reduce churn rate and boost your customer lifetime value.

Provide Incentives

Clients are less likely to churn, if they have some reason to stay with you. If your customers feel they are just sale, they’ll leave you as soon as possible and choose another brand. Instead of simply aiming their wallets, brands need to offer some value, because it’s the only thing customers want from businesses. Providing some incentives is a great way to encourage your satisfied customers to come back to your restaurant. Launching a reward loyalty program can help brands strengthen the relationships with their existing clients and make them feel appreciated and valued.

Engage with Your Guests

When you engage your guests, you draw them closer to your brand. That’s why, successful brands aim their efforts at effective customer engaging. To make sure that people remember your brand and want to return to your restaurant, you need to make your business a part of your clients’ daily workflow. High engagement can be achieved through providing valuable content about the benefits of your brand and regular updates, such as special offers in your restaurant. This will help you build a strong emotional connection with your audience and earn their loyalty.

Collect Customer Feedback

Keeping your clients happy is the key goal of any business. Although every restaurant owner realizes it, not all of them are sure if they are getting it right. The only way to understand whether or not your customers are satisfied with your brand is to collect their feedback. By encouraging your guests to leave their reviews and comments you can not only measure their satisfaction, but also improve your service and get actionable insight to create a better customer experience.

Personalize Communication

To get value, you need to offer value first. According to Salesforce, 63 percent of Millennial consumers are eager to share personal data with businesses in exchange for more personalized marketing. Thanks to the new opportunities that modern technologies provide, brands can connect with their customers via an individual message. Restaurants can collect data about their audience to create more personalized offers, send custom birthday greetings, and provide incentives that are relevant to their guests. With greater context and control, you can communicate with your customers more effectively and meet their expectations, influencing their behavior and encouraging them to return again and again.

Keep Your Eyes Open for Trends

As a business owner, you need to keep up with the environmental changes. According to Flurry Analytics, the time spent in mobile apps had increased 69 percent year-over-year. The number of valid reasons small businesses can offer up for not following the mobile trend and not having a mobile app decrease each year. Smart restaurant brands are already embracing what modern technologies have to offer by implementing a mobile app in their digital marketing mix. With its mobile app-based loyalty program, KFC AmRest managed to achieve multiple business goals, including winning back lost customers. One of its automated campaigns that included receiving a Free Colonel Sanders sandwich for lapsed customers delivered significant results — 34 percent of guests clicked on the offer to learn about the details, while 14 percent of guests came back during two weeks. What’s more, on average, seven percent of incremental revenue comes from this kind of campaign.

“Instead of competing with your competitors for new clients, it’s worth focusing on retaining your existing ones that will help you grow your business. By implementing a cutting-edge mobile app solution restaurant owners can build true brand loyalty and supercharge their customer retention,” said Vas Diachenko, CEO of LoyaltyPlant.

An integrated mobile loyalty program includes several essential components that help restaurants reach goals mentioned above.

Points-based reward program. This is the most popular loyalty program model, because it’s easy to use and intuitive: your guests earn points for every order and then can use them to buy free snacks. The program appeals to people’s emotions and appetite motivating them to visit your restaurant more often.

Customer data collection. A mobile app solution is a powerful tool for collecting valuable customer data to get insights into their demographics, behavior, habits, and preferences. This information will help businesses make smarter decisions and send out special offers and updates to their clients’ smartphones that are likely to be read.

Highly-targeted marketing campaigns. A mobile app allows to build unique, relevant content that addresses the needs of your target consumers. Using automated marketing campaigns restaurant brands can connect with their customers more effectively and plan smart promotional strategies. For example, you can send a personalized reward before lunch time, reminding about yourself. And geo targeting options enable restaurants to communicate with their guests more effectively based on their location.

Quality control. By implementing a feature that enables users to rate your service and leave their comments, you can easily collect customer feedback. Your guests’ reviews will help you figure out what they like and what should be improved in your restaurant.

Social media mechanics. A simple social media integration within an app provides an ability to share content on multiple social networks directly from your app. By giving your guests extra points you can encourage them to join your social media page and recommend your brand to their friends. This will help you successfully drive customer engagement.

Loyal customers are less likely to churn because they are more motivated and interested in communicating with your brand. Clients churn and that’s a fact. But with the well-planned strategy and innovative tools, you can improve your churn rate and increase customer loyalty.

Galina Grigoreva

Galina Grigoreva, head of marketing at LoyaltyPlant, a customer loyalty evangelist advocating highly personalized communications between brands and their customers with the help of mobile marketing solutions. She has a 10-year experience of marketing complex B2B solutions and a strong interest in data-driven marketing and omni-channel approach.

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